Since the first exoplanets were discovered in the early 1990s the number of known exoplanets
has doubled approximately every 27 months to date over 4,000 exoplanets have been
discovered and are considered confirmed in a startling new discovery astronomers at
the University of Hawaii have identified a very young and extremely hot exoplanet
about 400 light years away from earth but what has the scientific community buzzing is the
fact that this new planet has been captured in a direct image welcome to Factnomenal
and today we will be taking a closer look at this fascinating discovery
An exoplanet is described as any planet that lies beyond the confines of our solar system exoplanet
discovery is an extremely new branch of astronomy with the first exoplanets being discovered not too
long ago in the 1990s and the numbers have gone up dramatically ever since in fact the numbers have
actually doubled approximately every 27 months according to nasa it's fascinating that there
is now an entire generation of people who don't even know what it's like to grow up believing that
there are only nine planets in the solar system remember those days well the search for the worlds
beyond earth or even planets that are comparable to it has been ongoing for years now and through
the process scientists and astronomers have actually chanced upon some truly marvelous worlds
With new planets being discovered so frequently it's important to note that discovering one is
not as easy as it may seem in order to detect an exoplanet the first thing you would have to do
is to actually point your telescope at a star then you would proceed to look for more fainter
objects circling around the star this in itself would be extremely difficult as planets are just
too faint to detect on their own in nasa's own words it's like trying to see a firefly
flitting around a spotlight if it were that easy to spot an extrasolar planet we would have located
millions of them by now so how was the first exoplanet ever discovered then one might ask
well that all actually begins with observing the motion of a star in school we are taught
that the planets in the solar system revolve around the sun which is only the partial truth
the sun and planets actually revolve around the center of mass of the entire solar system itself
taking our solar system as an example the sun would be the most massive
component and so it's generally the closest to the center of mass but it does tend to shuffle
around a bit the planets around a more distant star should cause the star to move as well
this is exactly what the astronomers have used to find these planets using the doppler effect
it was a breakthrough discovery made back in 1992 that really provided the rock solid evidence about
these planets astronomers alexander wolzen and dale frail were the ones to announce the discovery
of not one but two planets comparable and mass to planet earth using somewhat of a variation
of the doppler effect what they discovered was not just objects circling a large bright star
but a pulsar undoubtedly one of the most exotic things you could find in the universe these
supernova remnants are so densely packed that any moment it could collapse into a black hole the
objects witnessed here orbiting the pulsar are the first evidence of planets beyond our solar system
some argue though that because it orbits a pulsar does it even qualify as a planet
from then on people's understanding of what a planet is began to change
flash forward to 1995. two astronomers at the Geneva observatory in Switzerland were working
to improve the doppler effect and hunt for more exoplanets that could be out there michelle
Miora and dda kayla were monitoring the stars and came upon a sun-like star named 51 pegasi
upon closer observation it seemed like 51 pegasi was moving 2n fro with an amplitude
of 50 meters per second over a period of 4.2 days the signal implied that there had to be a
planet with a minimum mass equal to that of either Saturn or Jupiter orbiting the star
the only issue was that the planet was orbiting way too close to its central star
about only 1 20th the distance from the earth to the sun there was initial skepticism and not
many were welcoming to the idea that there could be other worlds beyond our solar system but what
mayor and kaylo had actually ended up discovering is the planet that we know today as a hot Jupiter
that challenged the traditional planet formation theory altogether since then with the advance in
technology we have now moved on to better and more advanced methods like direct imaging micro lensing
transits and radial velocity and have been able to debunk numerous myths about the planets that lie
beyond as of today we have over 4 000 exoplanets that have been discovered and confirmed by
scientists and it looks like there is no stopping the hunt for these alien worlds what once was an
idea that was ridiculed and shunned by many is now a serious branch of astronomy that could very
well change the way we understand planets and the world beyond our solar system the study of these
exoplanets holds a very important key for us to understand how the formation of these worlds and
ours came to be a question that scientists and astronomers are still debating to this very day
direct evidence of extrasolar planets is very difficult to obtain
since they are fainter and smaller than the stars that they orbit
so instead scientists watch out for the wobble or faint gravitational effect that a planet
would exert on its central star which causes the wavelength of the light to shift ever so slightly
actually obtaining a picture of an exoplanet is nearly an impossible feat take Pluto for example
for years all we had of the planet was an image that made it look like a little blob on the edge
of our solar system Pluto orbits the sun about 40 times farther than the earth so you can just
imagine what an exoplanet sitting millions of light years away would look like well not much
at all recently university of Hawaii astronomers were able to capture a direct image of one of the
youngest planets ever discovered make way for the newest and youngest of all exoplanets 2m04
the exoplanet was discovered using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii and spotting the young planet
was no easy feat it took nearly three years for the research team to track its star across the sky
before they were finally able to confirm the baby exoplanet was moving right along with it
for a quote baby exoplanet this celestial body is actually quite immense and nearly three times
more massive than Jupiter and also orbits notably far from its central star 2m0437 at approximately
100 astronomical units typically a planet being this far from its star would mean that it's far
too cool to give off infrared radiation but this is where we see how young the planet really is at
just a few million years old the young exoplanet is still glowing hot energized by the heat left
over from its formation with temperatures around 1400 to 1500 kelvin making it glow faintly in
infrared allowing scientists to spot it from a distance of 417 light years the planet along with
a tow star are both comparatively much younger than the ones we find in our solar system needless
to say the planet has created quite the excitement and no one can deny that it's just the beginning
Eric Guidos lead author and professor at the university of Hawaii said this serendipitous
discovery adds to an elite list of planets that we can directly observe with our telescopes
he also stated that by analyzing the light from this planet we will be able to say something about
its composition and maybe where and how it was formed in a long vanished disk of gas and dust
around its host star as of now astronomers have their eyes on the young planet and its star and
believe this new system is an excellent candidate for some follow-up observations they are looking
to nasa's James Webb Space Telescope which would in all essence eliminate the shortcomings
of the Subaru telescope and help gather information about the gas giant's atmosphere
the complete study outlining the planet's discovery has now been published in the
journal of the notices of the royal astronomical society we still have so much more to discover
about the planet but don't let its youth fool you it's already out here making history if anything
this should be good news for space enthusiasts and amateur astronomers to grab your telescopes
and start planet hunting you never know you might just be the one to spot the next big exoplanet
so what do you think are you excited for the James Webb space telescope will we be able
to find more than just exoplanets tell us your thoughts don't forget to mash the like button
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